Shirley Style

 I try to do things efficiently, I really do. As old as I am, it seems that I need more practice in several areas.

THIS IS HOW I MAKE SMOOTHIES

I've made smoothies for years. Yesterday I waited for a few seconds, as is my habit, to make sure the lid wouldn't pop off at the blender's high speed, since I tend to put in lots of yummy ingredients. (This time an extra addition was grapes, which made those little bits of purple you see in the spinach/pineapple/banana/cucumber/parsley/carrot/celery mixture.) Well, after I left the kitchen for a task in another room, I returned to find my smoothie half spilled onto the counter.

I'd like to say it won't ever happen again, but this is Shirley we're talking about.

THIS IS HOW I SEW

 I've been sewing since I got a miniature sewing machine as a 10-year-old. The mittens I made (out of cotton material, mind you) didn't fit, because I traced around my hand without knowing I had to cut bigger than that for a seam allowance.

If you've never sewed, you may not know about thread, or that the little tail of thread hanging from the right side of the spool is NOT supposed to be there, and spells potential disaster. 

Most thread I've used comes wound on a spool, then the end is pulled through a tight cut in the edge of said plastic spool and glued down by a sticky circle with manufacturer's information stamped on it.

I've managed to get the end of the thread free on many occasions, but last week, it wouldn't come loose, so I finally cut the edge of the spool with scissors to release the thread end, but managed to cut through two strings of thread instead of just releasing the one I was after. (There was ANOTHER tail initially, making three potential candidates for threading through my needle, but it seems to have been subdued by my refusal to throw the spool away.)

Extra ends, dear reader, means that the threads can twist around each other and TANGLE. 

I'm sewing anyway, since I hate to waste all that lovely thread. I'm just waiting for it to work its way to the other thread end, interested to see what might happen then.

Life's an adventure.

THIS IS HOW I DO LAUNDRY

I've done laundry for decades, yet when I washed a load of whites, and threw in a faded old jeans jacket that had been washed many times before,  the result was half blue, half white clothes.

For one thing, how could the old, nearly white jeans jacket have enough dye left to turn clothes so blue?

For the second thing, how come only the silky things turned blue, and the cotton-y things stayed WHITE?

It's a mystery to me.

Do your tasks behave when you do them? 

In other words, is your life under complete, useful control?